‘Hurry scurry, flip flop, Toddle Waddle’ with your toddler at the seaside

We’ve just been on holiday and we’ve been refreshed by both our destination and being able to spend days with our granddaughter.

Holiday Reading 

As the holiday to the seaside was approaching, I went in search of books to pack, to add to Daisy’s holiday reading, and I found the board book version of ‘Toddle Waddle’ by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Nick Sharratt. 

The toddler toddles along through the book and is joined by other human and animal characters as they all walk together towards the end of the pier.  Each character is introduced with their own ‘sound’ rhymes and the rhymes grow through the book.

Toddle Waddle has delighted Daisy from the first reading and on holiday she repeatedly selected it during the daytime and requested it daily for her bedtime reading.  At various times, we have all read the book to Daisy and each one of us reads the book with slightly different intonation and varying the speed as we read the rhymes.

Repetition

The repetition, the rhyme and the rhythm of the book have all engaged Daisy and this is probably the first book that Daisy has participated in reading.  Previously, Daisy’s lifted flaps in books and found characters on pages but, for the first time, Daisy has begun to join in with the rhyme sequence and excitedly anticipate the Choo Choo and Bye Bye pages.

Recall

Toddle Waddle is developing Daisy’s skills of recall and I don’t think that it will be too long before Daisy can ‘read’ the book with us because she’s quickly learning the sequence of words.

Daisy still enjoys browsing through the book by herself, inspecting the detailed illustrations and looking at the details in the illustrations on the pages, such as the butterfly in silhouette or in colour on the other colourful pages.

This year we’ve read several other Julia Donaldson books to Daisy, but Toddle Waddle is definitely Daisy’s favourite book by this author.

As Daisy joins in with the rhymes in the book she’s vocalising sounds that prepare her for new words, extending her vocabulary – and introduce her to the fun of onomatopoeia.

Granny Smith Says

Sharing books like Toddle Waddle is great preparation for the work your grandchild will encounter when she starts Phase One of the Letters and Sounds programme as she begins to learn to read.